Roaming ‘robodog’ politely tells Singapore park goers to keep apart – A roaming robot dog built by Boston Dynamics is politely telling people in Singapore parks to enforce social distancing.

“Let’s keep Singapore healthy,” the yellow and black robodog named SPOT said in English as it roamed around. “For your own safety and for those around you, please stand at least one metre apart.

“Thank you,” it added, in a softly-spoken female voice.

Google unifies all of its messaging and communication apps into a single team – A good move. Google has multiple redundant messaging apps. I don’t use any of them because (1) I don’t have time to sit down and figure out what’s what and (2) I’m not going to invest in yet another Google service that Google will then turn around and kill.

I was burned by Google+ and Google Reader, and I saw what happened to Buzz and Wave. So, not going to try to kick that football again.

Now I’m curious which book it was and what was the so-called virtue signaling?

Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

The TSA is being sued for hoarding 1.3 million N95 masks: The agency isn’t even using them, while other federal agencies. like the VA, “go begging for PPE for high-risk workers….

Use of America’s airports have fallen by 95% and the TSA has asked most of its screeners to stay home. Those screeners that are working are wearing surgical masks, as they have not been trained to fit N95 masks.

One Minnesota TSA manager tried to donate his mask to that state’s department of health but was unable to do so.

America is united in favor of keeping quarantines going: “The tiny minority who’d benefit from the premature re-opening of businesses (large shareholders in large corporations that might survive such a blunder) want the rest of us to throw ourselves in the volcano to appease the economy gods.”

Strong antitrust enforcement begat Unix, which is the basis for “almost every computer you use today.”

Wechat spies on non-Chinese users.

Hidden doors disguised as bookshelves I thought about doing that for my home office and one day I just might. I’d make it look like the entrance to the Batcave in the 1966 Batman, complete with the door-opening switch hidden in the bust of Shakespeare.